Polka Polish

This is the last set of pictures I have from before the wedding, so I promise I’ll be following up with more wedding and honeymoon photos next! And to be honest, I was doubting whether or not to share these at all, since I wasn’t entirely happy with how they turned out.

This ensemble is a classic case of me loving all the components individually but them just… not being quite right all added together. The hat is wrong with the dress, I think, and different shoes would have gone better… but oh well, there’s always next time!

The dress is a little earlier than my usual era, but I love the floral print and it is a very comfortable dress on a day when I’m feeling puffy (which you can see I was). I’m curious – how would you style it?

This winter, I struck up an instagram friendship with another wonderful lady in the vintage community (Eliza, aka @vintagerosegirl) over our shared love of hats. We discussed preferred styles, hats that we would buy if they weren’t so expensive, and sent each other links to excellent hats that we’d seen.

Now, Eliza had been eyeing an extremely large sun hat at a well-known shop, except that it was slightly too expensive to justify. I happened to have her address on hand from selling her one of my larger hats, and so I decided that the proper thing to do was to purchase the hat and have it delivered to her without saying a thing. The plan was hatched, executed, and would have gone off very well indeed except that she was having a bad week and decided that maybe it was time to treat herself to a nice hat purchase! I did my best to feign surprise when she sent me a very grumpy message, complete with a screenshot of the hat listing with the prominent “SOLD” label.

Of course, just a few days later she got a VERY large box with the very large hat inside. And a week later, I got a box which I was sure I hadn’t ordered. And inside? This delightful periwinkle hat, with its polka-dotted veil.

I think I’ve mentioned before that the ladies over at Modern Millie are wonderful but also somewhat evil. They know my size, what I styles I gravitate towards, and how to get in touch with me, so sometimes when they get something in that has my name all over it they’ll let me know and nine times out of ten their evil plot works because I trot right over and buy that thing.

Such was the case with this amazing suit. I saw it on Instagram, got them to send me some details, and went right on over after work to try it on and promptly purchase it.

I don’t have a lot of suits that are appropriate for warmer weather, and I particularly love that this suit has a sort of quirky cusp-of-two-styles mix of features. Big asymmetrical buttons, padded hips (yeah, really), round shoulders, and bold bell sleeves paired with… a pleated skirt? The jacket in particular looks like its design might even have been borrowed from a fancier designer… although the suit doesn’t have any surviving labels.

I’ve started doing a monthlong vintage challenge on Instagram (#thevintagefashionchallenge) that consists of a series of prompts to share a bit about one’s vintage collection and inspiration. Today’s prompt is favorite color, so I thought I’d share this outfit on instagram and here on the blog.

I tend to say that my favorite color is all of them, but if pressed, I have a particular fondness for green, especially the really terrible shades. Purple is another longtime favorite, and I’ve recently become rather fond of aggressive raspberry pink.

Spring in New England is lovely, but the weather is rather… fickle. I’m eyeing the forecast for this weekend and ordering up a couple large umbrellas on Amazon Prime in case it decides to be torrential downpours. I’m REALLY hoping it doesn’t do that, but a 60% chance of rain and Murphy’s Law probably means it will!

These are pictures from much earlier in the spring on a rather windy day (as you might be able to tell by all my very strange faces and rumpled clothing) but I like the outfit and too much to skip sharing it just due to a little wind!

And speaking of wind, I did come into a bit of a windfall of hats this spring, including this one.

Religion and politics are, naturally, things that a person tries to avoid discussing with strangers. And in a way, all of you lovely readers are strangers… at least, although you may know me (or the bits of a character of me that writes this blog), I certainly don’t know all of you. And I am always hesitant to write much about my church singing for fear of appearing dogmatic and offending half my readers or appearing mercenary and offending the other half.

I think though, religious affiliations or lack thereof aside, we can agree that in America there is a strong association between Easter and Big Hats. I still haven’t picked out my Easter bonnet at the time of writing this post, so I’m sharing the hat I wore last week, which I think is quite worthy of the occasion and which I would not hesitate to wear on Easter Sunday except that I wore it last week.